


The Spare Key

by Metallic_Sweet



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: (you're ruled by the things you feel), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Falling In Love, From Sex to Love, Loneliness, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Threesome - M/M/M, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:31:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6297226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are not in love with each other. They are in love with Kaneki.</p><p>So they take comfort in each other's skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Spare Key

It is not beautiful the first time they come together.

It is in Tsukiyama’s car, which is a convertible. They are not small men; doing this in the backseat is not very comfortable. They are ghouls; they have to be careful not to accidentally destroy the car. It is not that Tsukiyama wouldn’t be able to get it repaired. He’s incomprehensibly wealthy from what Banjou has gathered over the past eight months. Rather, it would be difficult to explain to Kaneki and Hinami, who have gone to shop in the mall they’re parked under, why there are suddenly tears and dents in the car.

“Wouldn’t they smell it?” Tsukiyama had asked before they moved into the backseat.

“Maybe, but they'd have to know what they were looking for,” Banjou had pointed out.

Sex isn’t a scent that’s easy to recognise for ghouls. It’s extremely similar to how a recently used kagune smells, at least in Banjou’s experience. Still, it had gained him a strange look before Tsukiyama nodded. He leaned forward. Closed his eyes.

“Imagine,” he muttered as he started to climb back between the front seats. “Kaneki-kun.”

They don’t talk. Usually, Banjou would laugh because Tsukiyama being quiet is such a rare thing. Usually, Tsukiyama would be laughing at him. Considering he’s letting Banjou grip his hips to set a pace, that would be counter-productive. Banjou has his eyes open because he doesn’t want to accidentally hurt himself. Tsukiyama doesn’t open his eyes. It’s rough and unpleasant and hurts a lot more than it should. The silence is deafening. 

 

It is only meant to be that one time. It’s not that they like each other. In fact, Banjou distrusts Tsukiyama as much as he ever distrusted the majority of Aogiri Tree. Tsukiyama hates him. He told Banjou as much. He would kill Banjou if Kaneki wasn’t so attached to him. 

“You’re useless,” Tsukiyama said back in August; he’d lost his temper after a lead on a deserted mansion failed to turn up anything specific and Kaneki had stormed off after chewing Tsukiyama out. “You have no connections, no kagune, no fighting ability! What sort of ghoul are you? You can’t even fight! What does he even in see in you? You’re just a sentimental parasite!”

“At least I have that sentiment!” Banjou shouted back. “You’re only as good as your money. He hates you. You’re pathetic and disgusting!”

They didn’t kill each other then, although Tsukiyama had clearly wanted to. Kaneki chose that moment to come back. He demanded to be taken back to the flat and then to be left alone in the basement. Despite both of their efforts, Tsukiyama had nothing to do but leave until Kaneki wanted him again, and Banjou was left to his own devices. To attempt to explain things to everyone else. To think.

A week later, Banjou fucks Tsukiyama in the back of his car.

This is not something Banjou is proud of. It is not something he’s keen to repeat. It is very much the opposite. Despite how much he distrusts Tsukiyama, despite the fact that Tsukiyama wants to kill him, nothing in that encounter fits into the type of person wants be. He suspects, from how Tsukiyama resolutely does not acknowledge the incident initially, it is not how Tsukiyama views himself either. 

As a person who uses another for their skin.

So, when it happens again two weeks later, it’s an unpleasant surprise. 

This time, they’re alone. It’s Tsukiyama’s car again, and Banjou has gone along to pick up food for everyone aside from Kaneki and Tsukiyama. They’ve been waiting for rush hour traffic to pass outside of a park that offered a fairly secluded parking lot. It’s a strange choice, an obvious lovers’ lane. Tsukiyama glances at him, confirming Banjou’s suspicions. 

“Really?”

Tsukiyama doesn’t say anything. It seems this will be a running theme. He just looks at Banjou the same way he did two weeks before. A strange look that doesn’t fit well on his face.

It makes Banjou swallow.

“Alright.”

This time they don’t fuck. Tsukiyama starts for it, but there isn’t any lube, and Banjou doesn’t feel like having a repeat of last time. He doesn’t enjoy hurting others, and he’s fairly certain he’d hurt Tsukiyama the first time. He hadn’t let on, but he hadn’t looked too well when driving afterwards. Banjou’s refusal this time irritates Tsukiyama, though.

“I don’t want your sentimentality.”

“It’s not sentimentality,” Banjou snaps, which makes Tsukiyama open his right eye in annoyance. “I’d rather not have blood on my cock.”

“I’d rather it not be your cock at all,” Tsukiyama snarls.

They end up rutting up against each other. It’s not as satisfying because it’s harder to imagine this is something other than what it is. Tsukiyama mutters to himself a bit in languages Banjou can’t understand, and Banjou finds himself breathing Kaneki’s name far too often to keep up the sham. It feels dirty. 

“This is a mistake,” Tsukiyama says as they clean themselves up with tissues in the glove compartment. 

Banjou nods. He vows to himself never to let it happen again.

 

It keeps happening.

Most of the time, they have sex in the car. It’s where they’re often alone together for prolonged periods of time, waiting for Kaneki or on an errand for food, which is the one errand Kaneki doesn’t come along on. Tsukiyama brings lube after the third time, a plain, medical tube that he can’t seem to look directly at when he hands it to Banjou from the first aid kit under the driver’s seat. He doesn’t mutter to himself as much when he’s being fucked, and it’s easier for Banjou to stop saying Kaneki’s name.

“Do you want to switch?” Banjou asks the sixth time.

“No,” Tsukiyama says without opening his eyes.

By time October comes in, wet and dreary, Banjou knows that Kaneki and everyone else are aware something is up. No one says anything, but Banjou has noticed that Kaneki is watching him and Tsukiyama more than he did before, a slightly furrow between his eyebrows. Hinami watches them as well, but she watches everyone, tracking their movements and interactions. Ichimi, Jiro, and Sante have known Banjou for years, though. It’s Jiro who broaches the subject, late one night when everyone else has gone to bed. 

“Is something going on between you and Tsukiyama-san?”

Banjou looks down at his hands. There isn’t any way he can answer that question without lying. There is something going on, but, even if he could put it into words, Tsukiyama would likely kill him for spelling it out. That much hasn’t changed. In fact, nothing has changed. Banjou still distrusts and resents Tsukiyama. Tsukiyama still hates and would kill Banjou if he had the chance. 

They’re only doing this because they can’t do it with Kaneki.

They’re only doing this with each other because Kaneki keeps them around.

“You’re rougher than usually today,” Tsukiyama mumbles as Banjou ruts into him up against the wall of the private garage attached to the flat.

“You’re better when I can’t understand you,” Banjou says.

Something moves across Tsukiyama’s face. It makes Banjou pause. He stares at Tsukiyama. Bared teeth. Eyes squeezed shut. 

“What?”

“This is so fucked up,” Tsukiyama whispers before he jerks his hips to get them going again.

 

Tsukiyama goes away for a week after that. 

It’s a family vacation apparently. Since it’s to celebrate Tsukiyama’s graduation from university back in April, he’s already postponed it enough that he can’t get out of it. He apologises profusely to Kaneki and tasks his informant, Hori, with the surveillance work he’s not able to cover himself. Hori comes over on Friday with the sparse intel and stares at both Kaneki and Banjou for a very long time.

She knows, although Banjou doubts that Tsukiyama told her. She doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t give anything away. Her childish face eerily hides everything aside from the knowing.

“I don’t like her,” Kaneki says after she’s gone on her way. 

He tells Tsukiyama the same thing when he comes back, although he words it differently. It’s obvious that he put thought into it. Kaneki structures his phrasing to not hurt Tsukiyama’s feelings. 

“I’d rather not have her involved,” he says instead.

“Did something happen?” Tsukiyama asks as Banjou stretches him open.

“No,” Banjou says, looking down at his hand and Tsukiyama’s ass.

“Fucking liar,” Tsukiyama bites out before choking off a groan as Banjou crooks the fingers inside of him.

Tsukiyama doesn’t stop using Hori as an informant. Kaneki doesn’t say anything about it, but he doesn’t say much about a lot of things. He doesn’t look at Tsukiyama if it isn’t for information, and he doesn’t look to Banjou when he does have information. So Tsukiyama keeps bringing information so Kaneki will pay even the scantest amount of attention to him, and Banjou keeps fucking Tsukiyama because Kaneki is distracted and Banjou is irrelevant in the scheme of things.

It really is fucked up.

 

When December comes, a very cold and icy, Banjou makes a realization.

“It’s been a year.”

Tsukiyama blinks up at him. “Yes?” he asks, the hand on Banjou’s shoulder flexing slightly.

Banjou frowns. “A year,” he repeats as Tsukiyama’s eyes flicker under his eyelids; he shifts restlessly under Banjou’s weight. “Since we escaped Aogiri Tree.”

“Yes,” Tsukiyama says, and there’s a petulant note to the response. “Do you want to reminisce or do you want to put your dick in me?”

Instead of making Banjou angry, it makes him pause. He sits back, heels of his palms braced on Tsukiyama’s hipbones. Tsukiyama actually opens his eyes. They stare at each other for a long time.

“Banjou-san?”

It’s a rare correct usage of his name. It makes something in Banjou stir. Shake itself awake from where it’s gone to sleep however long ago. He looks at Tsukiyama, who stares back at him. His kakugan are showing due to arousal. His eyebrows are slightly furrowed. His lips are pursed. It accentuates his fine, symmetrical features. 

With his eyes open, he is absolutely nothing like Kaneki.

Not that Tsukiyama ever has been like Kaneki. Banjou isn’t as good at self-deception as Tsukiyama is, if only because he isn’t able to make himself shut his eyes when they fuck. But it’s so rare that Banjou sees Tsukiyama’s eyes when they’ve done this that somehow that is what makes the lie so undeniable. 

Banjou never wanted to be this person that he’s become.

“May I kiss you?”

Tsukiyama blinks. His eyes flicker like they often do under his eyelids. He shifts slightly, which is also familiar. He’s a very restless person, impatient and impulsive when it comes to physical things. It’s not dissimilar to Kaneki, especially these short days and long nights with no new information regarding Aogiri Tree. They’ve been at a standstill for so long that Banjou worries that Kaneki will try to push forward with or without information. With or without them. 

“Yes?” Tsukiyama says, but it’s clear from how he phrases it as a question that he’s unnerved by the change or maybe even the concept.

He’s right to be wary. It’s very different from what they usually do. Tsukiyama tastes like nothing in particular, and his lips are very dry. It would be wholly unpleasant, but he makes a strange little noise that isn’t and wraps his arms around Banjou’s waist. He likes it, Banjou realises, and that’s very different from everything else they’ve done before. Banjou adjusts himself onto his elbows and knees, making the abused leather of the backseat creak, so he can kiss Tsukiyama better. Deeper. Even though he doesn’t taste like anything.

Banjou wants to swallow more of those sounds.

It’s a much slower process than what they usually do. It has to be because Banjou isn’t inside of Tsukiyama, who usually drives their pace. In fact, in all previous encounters, it’s always been Tsukiyama who initiated and dictated what they did and how they do it. He’s the stronger one, both physically and intellectually, and Banjou had always just been a means to end. A body to imagine as Kaneki. 

That hasn’t changed, of course. The only thing that’s different is that Banjou has been allowed to change the rules a little bit. He still ends up fucking Tsukiyama, who controls the pace, but he also finds himself trying to play his own little game trying to get Tsukiyama to give up sounds that aren’t muttered words Banjou can’t understand. Tsukiyama knows what he’s doing, and Banjou can tell each little sound he gives up is something he finds embarrassing. It makes Banjou want them all the more, to see the pink flush darken in Tsukiyama’s cheeks and ears. To watch how his eye lids scrunch and feel his fingers twitch.

Kaneki would act like this, too.

The discovery is thrilling up until Tsukiyama’s hand shoots up. Grips his neck. Not hard enough to choke but close. He doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t need to.

“Stop,” he says, and there’s a very real edge of hysteria to his tone that’s both terrifying and alarming. “Pretend I’m him but don’t treat me like him.” 

“Okay,” Banjou manages before Tsukiyama releases him.

They finish. Clean up. Drive back to the flat where they unload the food. Tsukiyama doesn’t come up after Hinami meets them in the garage and tells them he’s gone out. Banjou and her put away the food after Tsukiyama drives away.

“Did something happen?” she asks, eyes wide and innocent but also painfully sharp.

Banjou swallows. 

He doesn’t know what to say.

 

It stops after that and Tsukiyama becomes weird. 

Not necessarily a bad weird. Just weird. Cagey and extremely difficult to talk to. Not that he was ever easy to talk to before, but he’s reticent around anyone but Kaneki, who he still wants as much attention from as possible, and Hinami, who he seems to genuinely want to treat kindly. If he was anyone else and this was any other situation, Banjou would have thought he was itching for a fight. Most ghouls and some humans get that way when they have too much pent up physical energy and nowhere for it to go.

Kaneki seems to have reached the conclusion that that is what is wrong with Tsukiyama. He’s begun to invite Tsukiyama to spar more often, and Banjou has to put up with the knowledge that the two of them are spending hours down in the basement these days. It makes the flat rattle, and Tsukiyama begins bringing change of clothes over regularly as well as toiletries so he can clean up afterwards. It doesn’t help the weirdness because pent up energy isn’t the cause, but it definitely improves his mood overall. He’s getting the attention he wants from Kaneki. 

Banjou is lonelier than ever. 

He has no one to blame but himself for that. It’s not like he and Tsukiyama were ever together, and Banjou is of limited use to Kaneki in the first place. With the winter stretching out and no interesting movements from Aogiri Tree, Banjou finds himself regulated to the flat more and more. He’s lonelier and, despite himself and the situation, growing bored.

Boredom is a new thing to Banjou. His life has always been tumultuous. Growing up on the fringes of human and ghoul society, unable to read or write his own name, he had always had something to do, something he was running away from or running towards. He’d been alone a lot, although he’d always ended up swept up into conflicts and surrounded by others controlled by someone stronger than himself. That hasn’t changed. 

But as the fifth month of stagnation rolls into the sixth and Valentine’s Day decorations show up in the shops, the boredom starts to physically hurt. It’s like he’s got a vice around his chest and throat when he passes by the shop windows when he’s out with Kaneki, Hinami, Ichimi, Jiro, and Sante. The red hearts taunt him. He’d never thought of Valentine’s Day as anything in particular in the past because he’s only really ever been in love with Rize, who just wasn’t the type of person to have ever cared for such a trite holiday. But Kaneki pays attention to these sorts of things, and he and Hinami chatter about it, if only because Kaneki is answering her questions about how the holiday functions.

“Did you ever receive chocolates?”

Kaneki laughs a little. He’s been doing that more lately. His shoulders are relaxed, and his hands hold their shopping bags securely but not tightly. If this had been two or three months ago, Hinami wouldn’t have even dared ask that question. It would have scratched too close to all of Kaneki’s scars. 

“Just courtesy chocolates,” he says, and there’s a warm note to his tone, a good memory. 

Hinami asks the same question of Tsukiyama, who comes by in the early evening with new flowers. He’s wearing a very conspicuous new coat. It’s Valentine’s red with a white fur hood. It would look ridiculous on anyone else. It is kind of ridiculous on him, too, but Banjou can tell it keeps him warm in the icy weather. From the way Tsukiyama hangs it up, he very obviously likes it a lot, too.

“Oh, yes,” Tsukiyama says, and he beams at the flowers as he arranges them by the kitchen sink. “I’m very popular.”

Hinami’s eyes slide over to Banjou. She stares at him for a long moment before she looks back to Tsukiyama, who is absorbed in the process of clipping thorns from a rose. 

“What do you do with them?” she asks as Tsukiyama rinses the clippers in the sink.

“The chocolates?” Tsukiyama asks, tilting his head to look at her; he smiles a little, a rueful expression. “Oh, I usually give them to Hori-san. She loves sweets.”

“It doesn’t that give people the wrong idea?”

Banjou’s head snaps around. Kaneki stands in the door to his room, a hairbrush in hand. He’s just woken up. Recently, he’s developed a habit of napping in the afternoon, especially if they’ve been out in the morning. The extra sleep is doing him a lot of good. Banjou has noticed he’s cracking his knuckles less. 

Tsukiyama’s smile brightens. He turns from his work, clippers in his right hand and a rose in his left. Banjou throws his arm around the back of the couch. 

“It might,” Tsukiyama answers, and he shifts slightly as Kaneki crosses the living room with a nod to Banjou; he’s obviously heading for the coffeemaker, which Tsukiyama was working in front of. “But we’re not together, and it’s better than letting it all go to waste.”

Kaneki looks at Tsukiyama with a raised eyebrow as he takes out a mug. They’re standing very close. Banjou feels his hand on his lap curl into a fist. He’s not jealous. He’s not.

“That’s good of you,” Kaneki says as he turns his attention to the coffee pot.

Tsukiyama blinks. For a moment, he’s unshielded. Standing with a rose and clippers in hand, wearing a red jumper with the sleeves rolled up, he stares at Kaneki with none of the aggression, suaveness, or performance he usually puts on. For a split second before he shifts and begins his work on the flowers again, it’s just Tsukiyama.

He gazes at Kaneki with such a sweet sort of softness.

It’s a punch in the gut. Even when they were fucking and Banjou was buried deep inside of him, Tsukiyama kept up his shields. 

If all it took to strip him down was a compliment –

Banjou looks away. Faces the television. Feels his chest, lungs, heart constrict. 

He is jealous.

But he’s not going to act on it. It isn’t his choice. Banjou isn’t going to interfere. If they like each other, then that’s good for Kaneki. Anything that takes Kaneki a step further from what happened to him in Aogiri Tree and Yamori, even it has to be with Tsukiyama: it’s better than not changing at all. Especially since the start of winter when Kaneki started sparing regularly with Tsukiyama, Kaneki has been calmer. It burns off the excess energy that the ghoul side of him harbours, that was steadily driving him mad. Despite how he eats, Banjou knows that Kaneki is more ghoul now than when they first met when Banjou was manipulated into tracking down Rize’s scent in Anteiku. That Kaneki was more human than anything else. 

This Kaneki, the one that guides Banjou and everyone else, is more and more a ghoul. He will never completely lose the humanity that’s still part of him, but it’s not because he refuses to eat humans. It’s because Kaneki himself is sentimental in a way that ghouls are never allowed to be. The fact that Banjou is allowed by his side when he has no real purpose in the scheme of things is proof of this.

Tsukiyama was right about that, too. 

If they do end up together, it might even be good for Tsukiyama, who is as ghoul as ghouls come. He reminds Banjou unsettlingly of Rize in that way. Kaneki might smell like Rize, but he’s nothing like her in disposition. Tsukiyama is like Rize in that when he’s roused, he’s uncontrollable. It’s impossible to talk him down unless he’s faced with someone stronger. Kaneki is stronger, even if he isn’t aware of it. Tsukiyama controls himself around Kaneki. He’s more stable now than he was when Banjou first met him. He used to have a manic look in his eyes like Rize did when she was in a binge period. It’s still there, but it’s quieter now. Mellowed out.

They make, Banjou admits even as his heart shreds itself into a million strips of bloody flesh, a well-balanced couple.

 

This is why Banjou is so angry when Tsukiyama pulls into lovers’ lane two days later before food pickup. 

“No?” Tsukiyama asks, his face so innocently confused when Banjou pushes him away, back into the driver’s seat.

“No,” Banjou grits out.

They sit for a long moment. Staring at each other. Tsukiyama frowns slightly, but his expression of confusion doesn’t change otherwise. Banjou watches his hands open and close over his thighs. He’s not someone who is used to being denied things. 

“Is this because I choked you last time?” 

Banjou wants so badly to punch him, but then Tsukiyama probably would kill him, damage to the car and Kaneki’s opinion be damned. The manic light, hungry and over-focused, is starting to pick up in his eyes. When Kaneki isn’t here, Tsukiyama tends to do what he wants. He’s uncontrollable.

Just like Rize.

“No,” Banjou says, and he sounds angry, but he also sounds scared; he’s never been able to hide his emotions or lie. “But I can’t guarantee I’ll treat you differently from how I’d treat Kaneki.”

Tsukiyama stares. Completely tense. His dominant arm is slightly crooked. Like he’s about to attack. Like he wants to defend himself. Banjou is going to die here. In a convertible parked on lovers’ lane, skewed through by an enraged Gourmet.

But then, against all odds, Tsukiyama turns away. 

“Alright,” he says, extending his legs towards the pedals, reaching out and turning the key. “Have it your way.”

In the end, they say nothing more. They drive away. They do the pickup. They bring the food back to the flat. Tsukiyama leaves almost immediately after establishing that Kaneki is taking his afternoon nap. Banjou is left with Sante to put away the food. Sante frowns after Tsukiyama’s car drives away, wiping down the counter more viciously than usual. 

“He’s so slimy,” Sante grits out.

 _No more than me_ , Banjou wants to say.

It’s the truth. Banjou is no good at lying.

 

April showers bring May flowers.

It is March, though, when Banjou is suddenly aware that Tsukiyama and Kaneki are together. It’s sudden not so much because he’s surprised but because they are. Banjou smells it when he wakes up from an afternoon nap of his own and happens to pass by Kaneki’s bedroom door. Banjou is able to recognise the scent Tsukiyama in the throes of physical passion because he’s intimately familiar with it. Kaneki’s scent, entwined as ever with Rize, wafts along with it. 

Banjou turns around. Goes back to his room. Puts on a jacket, socks, and shoes. He grabs one of the spare keys from the bowl next to the door and leaves even as he hears Hinami and Ichimi call after him. He jumps down the stairs three at a time and runs. 

No direction. No destination. He simply cannot be there while the person he’s been in love with for months makes love to the person he used as a substitute skin. In some ways, it hurts even more because Banjou can’t lie to himself: he’s come to care for Tsukiyama, too. They both remind him of Rize, who Banjou would have followed if she’d allowed it. Banjou has followed Kaneki, respects him for his heart and his strength as he did Rize. He’s been drawn in by Tsukiyama, who has the self-assurance and intense ghoulness that Rize once lived and breathed. 

Rize is gone. Kaneki and Tsukiyama have chosen each other. Banjou is on the outside. A sentimental parasite. Nothing has changed. Not really.

It’s late when Banjou finally heads back after wandering aimlessly through the local park, shopping district, and the crowded izakaya and restaurants of the business district after hours. He hadn’t been bothered because, despite the state that he was in, Banjou’s clothing and shoes are better than anything could have afforded on his own. He looked almost respectable, dressed in Tsukiyama’s money and Kaneki’s generosity. It is this realisation more than anything else that drives him back to the flat.

He is nothing on his own.

He walks slowly up the stairs. Unlocks the front door. It’s dark, although there’s a sliver of light under Ichimi, Jiro, and Sante’s door. It doesn’t mean they’re awake. They don’t like sleeping in the dark if they can help it. Banjou drops the spare key into the bowl, shutting and locking the front door. He toes off his shoes. Turns around to head to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Kaneki is sitting in a dark pullover at the kitchen counter.

Banjou nearly screams. He only manages to stop himself by clapping his hands over his mouth as Kaneki hastily puts a finger over his mouth. He lifts his other hand. Motions _come here_.

It’s not like Banjou has anywhere else to go.

He joins Kaneki at the counter. It looks like Kaneki was waiting for him because there’s a cup of lukewarm water in front of the neighbouring stool. It must have been hot a while ago. Banjou cups his hands around it. Kaneki’s noticed recently that Banjou likes to drink hot water. He’s noticed a lot more about the people around him since he started sleeping more often. 

Next to him, Kaneki sips his coffee. Turns and sets it down on the counter. He leans forward, folding his arms over the countertop. He tilts his head. Looking at Banjou. He’s not wearing his eyepatch. It makes him look kind.

“Where’d you go?”

Banjou looks down. Into his mug. Into the water.

“Around.”

A hum.

They sit together like that for a long time. Banjou finishes the water as Kaneki swirls the dregs at the bottom of his coffee. Outside, the wind has picked up. It whistles around the flat that doesn’t rattle. Doesn’t quake. There’s no cracks in the walls or holes in the roof for the cold to seep in. 

“Banjou-san.”

He looks. Kaneki looks back. There’s a calmness to his gaze. To the set of his shoulders. His entire demeanour. He breathes slowly. Deeply. 

He looks good. Healthy. Almost whole.

Slowly, Kaneki smiles. It dimples his cheeks. It reaches his eyes.

“Thank you,” he says, reaching out and taking Banjou’s hands, curling their fingers together, warm and rough and so very undeniable, “for coming back.”

The kiss is warm. Soft. Wet. Kaneki tastes of coffee and smells like shampoo, shaving cream, and Rize. Banjou shudders. It makes Kaneki pull back. He looks at Banjou with the same calmness as before, just more questioning.

“Is this not what you want?”

It’s all that Banjou wants. Banjou cannot lie. He never could.

The kiss this time is warmer. Less soft. Wetter. Kaneki lets go of his hands to cup his face. It’s a little clumsy, especially when Kaneki presses his tongue into Banjou’s mouth. He hits over Banjou’s teeth, not really knowing what to do with his tongue. It makes Banjou start to chuckle despite himself. Kaneki huffs, pulling away. He isn’t angry, though. His eyes are lit with a sloppy, red-lipped smile.

“Come to bed.”

Banjou doesn’t have to think. He would follow Kaneki anywhere. So he goes.

Tsukiyama is stark naked when he startles awake on Kaneki’s bed as Kaneki pulls Banjou into the bedroom. His kakugan are active as he scrambles around in the rumpled bedding, hands curling into fists in the sheet. He looks between Kaneki and Banjou, confusion, anger, and what Banjou recognises unsettlingly as humiliation flashing over his face.

“Kaneki-kun –”

Banjou tries to back up. Tries to leave. He shouldn’t have let Kaneki bring him here. But Kaneki pulled him and now holds onto him, and Banjou was powerless to stop it. 

“It’s alright, Tsukiyama-san,” Kaneki says, stepping forward and pulling Banjou with him. “I like him, too.”

It makes Banjou’s heart swell even as his stomach contracts. It doesn’t placate Tsukiyama, who stares at Kaneki as if he’s grown another head. It’s a very raw expression. Banjou, even as he stumbles as his knees hit the edge of Kaneki’s bed, is suddenly very afraid he’s about to see Tsukiyama cry.

“I don’t –”

Kaneki climbs onto the bed. He lets go of Banjou’s wrist. Reaches out and places his hands over Tsukiyama’s fists. Tsukiyama stares at him. Wide-eyed. Red on black framed by the same colour hair that Rize had. That, to this day, Banjou chases after in his dreams. 

Banjou never knew it was possible to want more than one thing, more than one person at the same time.

“Sorry,” Kaneki says, earnest and honest and so very much not like them, not like a ghoul at all, “did I assume?”

Tsukiyama blinks. He looks from Kaneki to Banjou. In that single glance, he’s more exposed than he ever was when they were using each other’s skin. Maybe that’s why he’d always kept his eyes shut. Maybe Tsukiyama isn’t half as good at lying to himself as Banjou had assumed he was. From the way Kaneki follows Tsukiyama’s gaze, it’s undeniable now that he knows. Maybe not everything but at least enough to figure out they’d been together. Once, twice, over fifteen times before.

“No,” Banjou says because Tsukiyama gets quiet at times like this, doesn’t like talking when he’s vulnerable. “You didn’t assume.”

He climbs onto the bed, which makes protesting noises with the weight of three when it’s only made for one. Kaneki sits back slightly to give him enough room. Tsukiyama doesn’t move. His eyes track Banjou’s movements. A predator. Wounded and ready to strike. But Kaneki is here, and he holds Tsukiyama back. Gives him self-control. 

Banjou cannot lie. 

“I want both of you.”

 

April showers bring May flowers.

It’s growing warm early this year. Not unpleasantly so but just enough that the rain brings with it the warning of growing humidity. It makes everyone lazy, especially since there is still no new or substantial information to follow up on Aogiri Tree. 

“Maybe they’re planning something,” Jiro says.

Banjou and Kaneki nod over the new file of photos from Hori. Tsukiyama has already seen them, so he’s engaged in a cheerful conversation with Hinami in the kitchen about the flowers he’s brought over. 

“Bloodroot and anemone,” he says as Banjou glances over at them as Hinami watches him arrange the small blooms in a different vase than usual. “We’re trying some new things at home, and these were the first to bloom properly.”

“They’re beautiful,” Hinami sighs, chin propped up on her hands. “Such a vibrant white.”

“Doesn’t bloodroot mean purification?” Kaneki mutters later that evening as he watches Tsukiyama stretch himself open on Banjou’s cock.

It makes Tsukiyama laugh a little, his eyelids fluttering in pleasure as Banjou adjusts their angle. Kaneki’s abused bed creaks angrily nowadays whenever they so much as twitch. Everyone in the flat knows what they get up to more often than not when Tsukiyama is over. Ichimi, Jiro, and Sante have told Banjou they don’t really get it, but they’re happy if he is. Hinami smiles a lot more, although sometimes she colours when they emerge together in the morning. 

“This is completely impure,” Kaneki says as he reaches down to jerk off to the private performance Banjou and Tsukiyama are more than happy to provide for him.

“It means other things,” Tsukiyama says once they’ve all had a chance to come. “Healing –”

“The healing power of sex,” Banjou says.

Tsukiyama kicks him off the bed. Banjou groans, his limbs flopping uselessly in post-coital leadenness. It makes Kaneki burst out laughing. Banjou chuckles, too, as he watches Tsukiyama sit up. He shifts onto his knees to look down at Banjou over Kaneki, making his half-arousal obvious. Banjou rolls his eyes. Tsukiyama’s endurance –

“You’re a monster.”

“I’m a koukaku,” Tsukiyama says, matter of fact, before he looks down at the body beneath him. “Kaneki-kun –”

“Impatient,” Kaneki complains without any heat. “Fine. You can suck me.”

It earns him a bright grin before the bed whines as Tsukiyama shifts down to settle himself between Kaneki’s thighs. He arranges Kaneki’s legs with an intense look in his eyes. It’s not dissimilar to how he looks at meat. He is the Gourmet after all. Banjou doesn’t know when he started to find this amusing, but it is.

He watches them. It takes Kaneki some time for his body to recover enough to react to Tsukiyama’s interest. Once it does, however, Kaneki gets into it. It’s a lovely sight, really, watching how Tsukiyama takes Kaneki’s cock with a truly obscene enjoyment and how Kaneki, as he starts to unravel, completely gives himself into the act, giving it his all as he always has in everything he does.

When Kaneki comes, Tsukiyama swallows it all. Sometimes that’s enough to make him come, but this time he’s left flushed and rock hard. Kaneki groans as Tsukiyama pulls back, gaze sliding to Banjou on the floor.

“We created a monster,” Kaneki slurs.

“Take responsibility,” Tsukiyama grins, all teeth as he climbs down to Banjou. 

He kneels over Banjou. The light in his eyes burns bright. Intense. On the bed, Kaneki laughs, soft and warm and wanting. When they kiss, Tsukiyama tastes of Kaneki’s come. 

Banjou wants them both. He has them both. Tsukiyama above him, leaning in and plundering him. Kaneki rolled onto his side to watch them from the bed, half-lidded gaze heavy and warm.

It is all that Banjou has ever wanted and more.


End file.
